Share this story

A car from GM's self-driving car unit, Cruise, received a traffic ticket from a San Francisco police officer who said that a Cruise car drove uncomfortably close to a pedestrian. Cruise disputes the officer's accusation, saying that the vehicle stayed more than 10 feet away from the pedestrian.

"According to data collected by Cruise, the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away from the car," Ward says. The car was in self-driving mode and "it began to continue down Harrison at 14th St. Shortly after the car accelerated, the officer pulled it over."

Further Reading

Cruise defended the behavior of its vehicle in a statement to the station. "California law requires the vehicle to yield the right of way to pedestrians, allowing them to proceed undisturbed and unhurried without fear of interference of their safe passage through an intersection," Cruise said. "Our data indicates that’s what happened here."

There's relatively little systematic reporting about the behavior of self-driving vehicles from Cruise or other companies. California does require companies like Cruise to report when one of its vehicles is involved in a crash, and companies also file annual reports listing how often human drivers have to take over the wheel for safety-related reasons.

But other aspects of the vehicles' driving behavior only come to light through sporadic press reports. A story from the Information earlier this month cited anonymous sources who said that "Cruise cars frequently swerve and hesitate,” and have trouble with construction zones, tunnels, and distinguishing between motorcycles and bicycles.

And reporting is practically non-existent outside of California. Arizona, the site of last week's fatal driverless car crash in Tempe, does not require driverless car companies to file reports on all crashes or disengagements as California does.

Correction: We originally reported that the incident occurred a day after the Uber crash in Tempe because that's what the CBS 5 story originally said. But they have since updated the story to say it was a week afterwards. We have updated the story and regret the error.